~ Adventures in Modeling

Tag Archives: Victorian house

Operation move the dollhouse to Philly one piece at a time so it’ll be there safely by the time the movers come for the rest of my things is underway.

Started with the back section this weekend.

After packing up all the little miniatures inside, I had to separate it from the rest of the house…

…and bundle it up snuggly in the back of the car.

(With just enough room for Cider to ride alongside…luckily he’s a very calm road-tripper.)

Everything came out safe and sound on the other side.

And happily, I have enough photos of the rooms (on this blog) that I could put everything back in place quickly and easily.

I haven’t posted anything for the past five weeks….that’s because I haven’t made any progress on the house. I seem to have under-estimated how exhausted this pregnancy was going to make me. After working and teaching and getting through the basic necessities of life, I don’t seem to have any energy left in the evening to design and make miniatures.

But I do have a plan in mind for the design of the drawing room floor, and the drawing room fireplace arrived in the mail….so hopefully I’ll get to it soon.

Drawing room…the room where women ‘withdrew’ after dinner (hence the name), so the men could sit around and drink and talk politics or other such things.

Which makes it the most feminine of the formal rooms in the house…and although out and out pink has never been my style, I think I will concede a little here and use a pale peach tone among others.

So here is my inspiration photo for the drawing room (on the left), as well as for the less formal sitting room which will lead into it (you can click on the photo to make it larger and easier to see).

The idea of the stenciled ceiling especially appeals to me, being very late 19th century, although I have no idea how I’ll pull that off yet.

In any case, I started with the walls I had already cut out for the room. (The furniture and chimney here are not right, but I can’t seem to find exactly what I want online and I happen to have these laying around, so they will have to do for now.)

The peach and cream cloth in front will be used for the curtains for those windows propped up on the sides.

I started adding studs to the north walls, as well as cut out a hole for a window.

Placed those where they needed to be.

Did the same for the west wall, enlarging the archway which will lead to the dining room.

It’s late, so that’s all I’ll do tonight, but the south walls still need to be done, and then I need to start thinking of a design for the parquet floor.

Not a lot of time and energy to work on the house tonight. But I did cut out a set of risers for the stairs.

Glued them on.

Tried to place the stairs in the stairwell, but realized it was just a little too wide.

So tore off the risers, cut a sliver off the end of them, and glued them back in again.

Then cut out two treads and sanded down the front edge…before realizing I had cut them across the grain instead of with the grain (as you can see from the cupping / warping of the treads on the photo). So I’ll need to do those again tomorrow.